What Makes a Home.

I’ve lived in this house for four years. It's not ours but rather a guest house that belongs to my family, which they have graciously allowed us to inhabit while we get our bearings. My husband and I moved to the Bay Area from Manila four years ago which in hindsight was a privileged life of domestic freedom - from chores and other things but that in itself is another entry. 

I’ve become the accidental homemaker in the past years and was completely unprepared when we moved here. 

This house, albeit, severely outdated, has been good and kind to us.   It’s stocked with pretty much everything you might need for a short vacation. Linens. Pillows. Towels. Pots and pans. Washer and Dryer. It is a house that provides, thanks to my thrifty grandmother’s twenty plus years of foresight and an awesome aunt who took care of it for years.  Case in point: I needed a desk - and there it was, though smaller than what I’m used to, but it was there. Or that one time I needed laundry baskets and there were five of them piled up in the garage. Oven mitts, three in the kitchen drawer. And don’t even get me started on the deluge of dinnerware (still bought my own - I find that it is important to have your own dinnerware). Extra storage, a seven drawer mini chest with wheels!  It’s like the house is a genie of sorts, rub it the right way and pooof. There it is. Well, maybe more like a new friend that you make much later in life as an adult. You meet and bring both your life history with you and like pieces of a puzzle there is a shapely spot with the right fit. More than mere structure, or a roof over our heads, it gave my husband and I countless opportunities to learn from each other.

The rooms are themed in hardcore eighties swag. It’s a time machine. Three rooms each splashed with a specific color: pink, green, and blue. The curtains, beddings, lamps, art, and all details large and small considered for thematic consistency. 

Which of course, I am instinctively opposed to. I’m all about the mixed and the unmatched. 

Also, all my life, pink was the enemy. I stayed away from anything pink and sweet and everything that resembled a blushed state. And where else would I end up but in the Pink room. Which now we simply refer to as, our room. We accepted the space, and likewise, the space embraced us with the warmth and comfort of a bedroom ---  and a new appreciation for all shades of pink. 

And yet there is also a deep sense of nostalgia. Maybe because in all the years that my family and I have been staying here - nothing has changed. The furniture is the same, the layout;   it even smells the same. Memories of this space float about like tiny white specs suspended in snow globes.  Even deeper still, it is the house that I have now brought my daughter into and will raise her for who knows how long. I can pretty much say with certainty that the first year of her life will be spent growing up here. Who knows when we can afford our own place. 

I continue to dream...

A rundown of details includes, a very old (yet working) dishwasher, popcorn ceilings, band of wallpaper where a cornice would otherwise be, hi-maintenance curtains, outdated kitchen cabinetry, brass fake fruit bowl with crystal chandelier drops, faux plants,  a horrendously shabby backyard with no upkeep, rusted gate. There is quite literally a laundry list. 

I can feel myself growing reluctant roots in here mostly because this house is not mine and I know that there will come a time when we will have to move and settle down elsewhere. 

Possibilities.

  

It was only after the birth of my daughter that things took drastic measures of change. And how could it not. A pile of laundry, bouncers, a swing, toys, rattles, baby gyms. Everywhere. So many things, for such a little girl. Our little Love brought light into this house and NEVER would I have ever thought - back then as a child, as a teenager on spring and summer vacations here that my girl, my baby - would light up the empty spaces of this house and change it’s energy forever. The walls of this house have witnessed the unfolding of a life from birth onwards and the vibrant flow of that energy will always be the glimmer that makes this house a home. 

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